Get the State of DevSecOps
This report covers the latest trends in secure software development, including AI-generated code
Definition
DevSecOps is an application security (AppSec) practice that introduces security early in the software development life cycle (SDLC). By integrating security teams into the software delivery cycle, DevSecOps expands the collaboration between development and operations teams. This makes security a shared responsibility and requires a change in culture, process, and tools across these core functional groups. Everyone involved in the SDLC has a role to play in building security into the DevOps continuous integration and continuous delivery CI/CD workflow.
Incorporating security continuously across the SDLC helps DevOps teams deliver secure applications with speed and quality. The earlier security can be included in the workflow, the sooner security weaknesses and vulnerabilities can be identified and remedied. This concept is sometimes called “shifting left” because it moves security testing toward developers, enabling them to fix security issues in their code as they develop, rather than waiting until the end of the cycle, when it had traditionally been done. By contrast, DevSecOps spans the entire SDLC, from planning and design to coding, building, testing, and release, with real-time continuous feedback loops and insights.
How does DevSecOps differ from DevOps?
In simple terms, DevOps is about removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams. In a DevOps model, development and operations teams work together across the entire software application life cycle, from development and testing through deployment and operations.
DevOps is an ideology with three pillars—organizational culture, process, and technology. All three are geared toward helping development and IT operations teams work collaboratively to build, test, and release software in a faster, more agile, and more iterative manner than traditional software development processes.
According to The DevOps Handbook, “In the DevOps ideal, developers receive fast, constant feedback on their work, which enables them to quickly and independently implement, integrate, and validate their code, and have the code deployed into the production environment.”
Virtually all modern software organizations now use an agile-based SDLC to accelerate the development and delivery of software releases, including updates and fixes. DevOps and DevSecOps use the agile framework for different purposes. DevOps focuses on the speed of app delivery, whereas DevSecOps augments speed with security by delivering apps that are as secure as possible, as quickly as possible. The goal of DevSecOps is to promote the fast development of a secure codebase.
DevSecOps integrates security into every part of the SDLC—from build to production. In DevSecOps, security is the shared responsibility of all stakeholders in the DevOps value chain. DevSecOps involves ongoing, flexible collaboration between development, release management (or operations), and security teams. In short, DevOps focuses on speed; DevSecOps focuses on security at speed.
Why is DevSecOps important?
The “Global State of DevSecOps 2023” report from Black Duck, based on a survey of more than more than 1,000 IT professionals across the world, reported that 53% of respondents test the security of their business-critical applications at least weekly, with 31% testing them at least daily. This indicates that integrated automated security testing with DevOps tooling is becoming the norm. Organizations in a variety of industries are using DevSecOps to break down silos between development, security, and operations so they can maintain development velocity and security.
DevSecOps applies across all industry verticals, including
- Automotive: DevSecOps reduces lengthy cycle times while still ensuring that software compliance standards such as MISRA and AUTOSAR are met
- Healthcare: DevSecOps enables digital transformation efforts while maintaining the privacy and security of sensitive patient data per regulations such as HIPAA
- Financial, retail, and ecommerce: DevSecOps helps ensure that the OWASP Top 10 web application security risks are addressed and maintains PCI DSS data privacy and security compliance for transactions among consumers, retailers, financial services, and so on
- Embedded, networked, dedicated, consumer, and IoT devices: DevSecOps enables developers to write secure code that minimizes the occurrence of the CWE Top 25 most dangerous software errors
What are the benefits of DevSecOps?
When development organizations code with security in mind from the outset, it’s easier and less costly to catch and fix vulnerabilities—before they go too far into production or after release.
The benefits of moving from DevOps to DevSecOps include
- Finding issues early. Finding issues before they're pushed further into the SDLC reduces your chances of them slipping through to production.
- Fixing issues faster. Automating testing and orchestrating by policy, when combined with closed feedback loops between your security and development teams, helps your teams cut though findings noise, prioritize efficiently, and speed up remediation.
- Reducing the window of attack opportunity. Abbreviating the time span between detection and remediation means malicious actors have a much smaller opportunity to gain access.
- Increasing the ability to scale. Integrating testing into your development pipeline and managing with automated policy gives you the flexibility to scale up or down without sacrificing development velocity.
Which application security tools are used in DevSecOps?
To implement DevSecOps, organizations should consider a variety of application security testing (AST) tools to integrate within various stages of their CI/CD process. Commonly used AST tools include
- Static application security testing (SAST). SAST tools scan proprietary or custom code for coding errors and design flaws that could lead to exploitable weaknesses. SAST tools such as Coverity® Static Analysis are used primarily during the code, build, and development phases of the SDLC.
- Software composition analysis (SCA). SCA tools such as Black Duck® SCA scan source code and binaries to identify known vulnerabilities in open source and third-party components. They also provide insight into security and license risks to accelerate prioritization and remediation efforts. In addition, they can be integrated seamlessly into a CI/CD process to continuously detect new open source vulnerabilities, from build integration to preproduction release.
- Interactive application security testing (IAST). IAST tools work in the background during manual or automated functional tests to analyze web application runtime behavior. For example, Seeker® IAST uses instrumentation to observe application request/response interactions, behavior, and dataflow. It detects runtime vulnerabilities and automatically replays and tests the findings, providing detailed insights to developers down to the line of code where they occur. This enables developers to focus their time and effort on critical vulnerabilities.
- Dynamic application security testing (DAST). DAST is an automated black box testing technology that mimics how a hacker would interact with your web application or API. It tests applications over a network connection and by examining the client-side rendering of the application, much like a pen tester would. DAST solutions do not require access to source code or customization; they interact with your website and find vulnerabilities with a low rate of false positives. For example, Continuous Dynamic™ and Polaris fAST Dynamic identify vulnerabilities on web applications and APIs, including web-connected devices such as mobile back-end servers, IoT devices, and RESTful or GraphQL APIs.
What are the challenges of DevSecOps?
Implementing DevSecOps can pose some challenges for organizations when they are getting started. Software development involves various technologies, including frameworks, languages, and architectures that have their own unique way of operating and being developed. This can make it challenging for security teams to continuously test and monitor them at the speed required.
Combining these development tools and techniques with improperly configured security testing mechanisms can easily cause pipelines to become brittle. Brittle pipelines can break when a part goes down or automations fail. This is an unfortunately likely outcome if security teams fail to manage all the triggered events and the policies that govern them, which can be complex and time-consuming.
Lastly, risks can be introduced anywhere along the pipeline, so it’s important to implement security checks throughout the software development process to ensure that any new issues that manifest within the pipeline are detected as early as possible. It can, however, be difficult for teams to coordinate and manage the variety of security checks required, due to the complex conditions listed above and impediments to visibility and priority that come from distributed development and organizational nuances of DevSecOps.
How can Black Duck help with DevSecOps implementation?
Moving to a DevSecOps model doesn’t have to be complicated. With today’s leading AppSec solutions from Black Duck, your organization can easily shift security left without slowing down your development teams.
The Black Duck Polaris™ Platform is an integrated, cloud-based application security testing solution that can help you easily onboard your developers and start scanning code in minutes. And your security teams can centrally track and manage AppSec testing activities and risks across thousands of apps to ensure full security coverage across your pipelines, teams, and business units.
Black Duck also offers a wide range of extensions and plugins to empower your developers to write secure code in real time and ensure the flexibility of their pipelines in the future. Code Sight™ provides rapid, IDE-based testing so your developers can write more-secure code and fix vulnerable components before pushing software downstream. Developers can quickly and accurately detect security defects and view detailed remediation guidance, all without leaving the IDE.
The Black Duck GitHub Action, GitLab Template, Azure DevOps Extension, and Jenkins plugins create seamless connectivity to test servers, which enables developers and DevOps teams to embed security testing into their existing workflows. Once configured, these plugins run automated security checks and enforce policies and risk tolerance without any additional setup required from developers.
The Polaris platform, along with a wide range of plugins and extensions, provide a comprehensive and flexible solution that can scale and grow with your business. By centralizing control and visibility for your AppSec teams and empowering your developers to leverage security testing insights within their existing workflows, you can ensure that the software you’re developing is deployed securely and efficiently.
Resources to help you automate DevSecOps
Steps to Evolve DevSecOps at the Speed of AI
State of DevSecOps Report
How to automate security tests with GitHub, GitLab, and more
Expand Risk Awareness in DevSecOps